Why is this baby ferret crying?

According to the description under the video this is a 6 week old ferret.

"it was the first day he came. he's 1.5month old. i put him in the box while i was cleaning his bed. then, he was crying all the night unless i hugged him in my arms...."

This ferret is too young to be away from its mother and it obviously also doesn't like being in that box. The box is the lesser issue here though...

At 6 weeks of age ferrets are still learning critical social skills from their mother and siblings. 2 weeks longer with mum and siblings makes a HUGE difference to a baby ferret.

Taking a baby ferret away from its mother at such a tender, early age can cause unnecessary stress and anxiety. At 6 weeks of age it really still needs to be cuddled up to its brothers and sisters. That could be the main reason why the baby ferret crying would only stopped when the owner hugged him.

In this case there are 3 things that should have been done differently:

1. The pet shop never should have sold this ferret to anyone at such a young tender age.

2. The ferret owner should have done more research before purchasing this baby. I'm sure she loves this little fellow to bits (how could you not? He's absolutely adorable!) but the animals welfare always should come first. Off course, we can't judge the owner based on one video alone (Plus, who am I to judge? I bought my first ferret as an impulse buy and having known nothing about ferrets!). I personally do not know the whole back story to this video so it is a bit unfair to judge her. I just really hope she knows how to look after that little baby properly and will give it a great long, healthy life :)

However, buying ferrets too early from pet shops and dodgy breeders is actually a huge issue and that is the main point I want to educate you about in this article. I would love to see no ferrets being weaned before 8 weeks of age (some breeders even insist that ferrets should not be weaned before the age of 10 weeks). So if we learn anything from this article then lets make it to make sure we continue to educate people on the correct age to wean ferrets and then, maybe in the near future we may see a significant decrease in the amount of ferrets taken from their mothers too early.

3. The breeder never should have weaned a ferret that young. Part of the headline in this video is Japanese (I'm 95% sure). When I visited exotic pet shops in Japan, ferrets came from either one of two sources: Marshall Ferrets and Path Valley Farms (See video below). These two company's are some of the biggest commercial ferret breeders in the world so you would think that they would know what age ferrets should be weaned, wouldn't you?

When I was visiting a ferret shop in Japan I found some 6 week old ferrets in there too (I've included the footage in the video below). Even though the pet shop said that they were not for sale until 8 weeks of age they should not have been there in the first place.

Anyway...I know a lot of farents will not enjoy watching a baby ferret crying that much but I thought it was a good opportunity to educate everyone on the correct age baby ferrets should be weaned.

If you believe this is a great opportunity to educate others about baby ferrets then please share this article with your friends :)

Check out the baby ferret crying and my experiences with Japanese pet shops in the videos below: